The accident

One of my father’s more eccentric habits was whenever possible to photograph the relatively minor childhood illnesses and injuries sustained by his sons—a slightly scarifying suite of mumps, measles, playground scrapes, cuts, bruises, splinters, casts and bandages. I am not quite sure what lay behind this curious habit, but it has certainly left us with a powerful resource for memory-jogging. I suppose he must have felt that no record of an essentially happy childhood is complete without including at least a few of its less comfortable moments. The others are better able to date this photograph than me, but I think Dad must have taken it in the drive at 18 Denham Place while Simon was building the catamaran, ca. 1969, when I was about five. I am standing between the twin hulls of that fine, handmade work-in-progress. Some days earlier Mum took me to watch Hamish playing football on the oval at Grimwade House, and, in a moment of genuine joie de vivre—ignoring the football—I scampered along a low parapet in the direction of Orrong Road, tripped, fell headlong into a blocky brick quoin, and smashed my little nose to smithereens. I can see the spot, not too far from an enormous Moreton Bay fig that rises next to the dark blue scoreboard, but the subsequent images are but flashes of vague recollection. I remember the first aid room in the old house, along dark corridors, then staring into the white enameled kidney-shaped dish in my lap with spots of blood dripping down and rapidly accumulating in it. A large and sensible nurse is there in a white apron and starched cap. Mum is on an old black bakelite telephone. I remember the ward at St. George’s Hospital in Kew, at the end of another very long corridor, then bravely waving goodbye to Mum and Dad when in due course they had to leave me there. I remember the kindly old men in the adjacent beds, set at right angles to mine, who I imagine did their best to divert me, and the kindly nurse who, the next morning, after my operation, showed me my bandages and my two purple black eyes in the mirror and told me that I looked just like Batman. There is a bright shaft of light slanting in from the window next to my bed. The tears came fast and strong, for I had no idea who Batman was. The operation was performed by Mr. Ham, the ear nose and throat surgeon; not our general practitioner, Dr. Richard Ham, but Mr. Ham the specialist. In that old-fashioned locution, the medical specialists of Collins Street still went by the slightly superior “Mr.,” or, in the case of the surgeon who removed my appendix some years later, “Sir Edward” (Hughes). Lady Hughes—Alison—is still alive, and a loyal member of the 8.00 a.m. congregation at St. George’s Church of England, Malvern. I have a strong feeling that the basis upon which both surgeons were engaged was that they were golfing cronies of my father’s, but that is neither here nor there. Certainly my little nose was never quite the same afterwards, and to this day it lacks an underlying bone structure extending far past the uppermost portion of the bridge. My brothers have rather elegant, straight Roman noses, but mine was from then on different, broader, and a little spongier. This vaguely bothers me. Still, it has served me well, and shows no other outward signs of trauma. It is a matter of conjecture whether any lingering inward trauma is helped or hindered by a close perusal of Dad’s slightly weird photograph. Look at the posture: little hands clasped behind my back, gently biting the bottom lip, gazing up quizzically, feet firmly planted, delightful little knees—rather formal. Obviously I have never since scampered along anything remotely resembling a parapet, and much less one punctuated by squat brick quoins.

The postcards

Hardly a week goes by when I do not receive at least one picture postcard from my beloved elder brother Hamish, sometimes several. This has been the case for at least 37 years, probably longer. Through all but approximately fifteen of those years we have been separated by long distances—north and south, east and west. Since Hamish went off to Cambridge in 1974, shortly before my tenth birthday, I have kept them all, hundreds and hundreds of them—all written in his unique, self-disciplined longhand. Today they live in acid-free archival boxes, and I have plenty of empties in reserve. The more recent ones often contain news of his two wonderful boys (my fourth and fifth nephews Mungo and Roy), but more often by this essentially shorthand route Hamish brings to my mailbox apothegms, witty remarks, riddles, and shrewd observations, in other words much food for thought. And this is not even to mention his many amazing scrapbooks. It is a vast and accumulating act of brotherly love. I am ashamed that at times I may have been inclined to take it for granted, so consistent and reliable and rhythmical is the pattern of the correspondence, wherever I happen to be. If it were ever necessary to reconstruct the long sequence of my home addresses on three continents I need only consult the boxes. Hamish’s choice of postcard is never conventional, indeed there is ample head-scratching in store for future historians and anthropologists who will no doubt wonder, based on my collection, what form of collective psychosis produced through the second half of the twentieth century such limitlessly baffling fodder for the printing press or the postcard rack. It is also notable that in carrying out his unending task of written communication Hamish has without doubt bolstered the income stream of Australia Post. Last night, whilst sitting up in bed and browsing through my treasure, I wondered if, prior to the introduction of postal processing by machines—which can be a little rough on postcards, there were any postal and telecommunications workers toiling away in the sorting rooms of the G.P.O. in Melbourne who came to recognize the steady flow of postcards from such a clearly discernible hand, and looked upon them with fondness—or even started to worry if, at length, a fortnight went by without one or two flowing in from Korumburra or Fitzroy. There have rarely been any such lacunae. And this may well be a source of continuing fascination at the G.P.O. because, since the advent of artificial intelligence, I rather doubt whether the post office computers, no matter how advanced, are sufficiently versatile to adapt themselves to Hamish’s hand-writing. His usually minute but clearly legible letters have for as long as I can remember been adorned with looping descenders of flamboyant scale and proportion.

Dad in Budapest

P. C. Trumble (front row, far right) attends a murder trial in Budapest.

Shortly before Hamish took up residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, Dad took him on the old Orient Express to Vienna and Budapest, where for some reason he had arranged to attend a law conference, along with several other Australian delegates, including, I fancy, Diane Baker. This must have been in the early fall of 1974. I must have inherited my interest in espionage from Dad, because on this brief excursion to the eastern bloc, he was thrilled by the prospect of being subject to covert surveillance, and certainly alert to the possibility that everyone from concierge to putzfrau was a covert Soviet functionary. I am sure he knew that this was almost certainly not true, but part of him would have regretted it. Some people are disturbed by the thought that all is not as it seems, but Dad was simply delighted, and I must admit that I usually am too. He loved the thought of hidden microphones, agents provocateuses lurking on every street corner, intrigue aboard the steamer on Lac Balaton or being followed across the Heroes’ Square. Certainly, part of the entertainment provided to the conference delegates was the opportunity to attend a public murder trial, of which this photograph is the slightly sinister record. There he is, seated in the front row on the far right, wearing headphones, and looking wholly absorbed. I suppose it is rather depressing to think that for some poor wretch in that court room the only thing worse than being tried for murder was being tried before an audience of well-fed lawyers mostly from the other side of the iron curtain. In any case, the more some foreign capital resembled the setting of a spy novel, the happier Dad was. He loved spy novels. And in his hotel room, late at night, he poured his delight into ridiculous verses, written in longhand with his fountain pen, and posted them home to us in envelopes decorated with cartoons, almost always harnessed to the PAR AVION portion at the top left hand corner of an airmail envelope. Incidentally, does anyone under 50 remember air-mail envelopes, or the frisson of pleasure caused by receiving one, and devouring the onion-skin contents? If the attention of the Hungarian authorities was ever drawn to these, one can only imagine what perplexity they must have caused. Such was the pointlessness of Cold War paranoia. Certainly Dad’s gleeful presumption that Budapest was a seething nest of Russian spies went hand in hand with the certain knowledge that there was nothing much that they could gain by ensnaring a Melbourne city solicitor who was also, at that time, director of the Housing Loans Insurance Corporation, honorary treasurer of the Medico-Legal Society of Victoria, and a member of the board of management of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, etc. etc., except general confusion, and a lot of wasted time and effort. Safely back in the free world, and coinciding there with Kenneth and Sylvia Aitken, of all people, Dad and Hamish attended the Staatsoper in Vienna. In the audience that night, in other words the night of Monday, September 16, 1974 (Parkett, Reihe 8, Sitzen 3 und 4), only a few places away and in the same Reihe, were seated Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. Was it The Tales of Hoffmann, I wonder? I must remember to ask Hamish.

Dad and documentation

Lately I have commenced the awesome task of sorting through and identifying the Trumble family papers that are ultimately destined for the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Dad’s run of scrapbooks is fascinating because he kept everything—pretty much in chronological order—a confetti of mementoes of professional and domestic life from 1949 to the 1980s. Nothing he regarded as too trivial to escape notice and preservation. Beyond the scrapbooks, however, there are hundreds of other documents and photographs that came from previous generations—a group of long letters, for example, from the novelist Mary Grant Bruce to her lifelong friend our great-grandmother Borthwick and to her daughters, Aunt Jean and Aunt Kath, which seem to imply that various aspects of the Billabong stories, and of the Linton family of Gippsland, were based at least in part on the Borthwick family of Bald Hills near Sale. As well there is a sheaf of more official papers. This one is typical. Evidently inspired by the glorious Trumble heritage of test cricket, Dad put each of his sons up for junior membership of the Melbourne Cricket Club—at birth. Here is Hamish’s docket, lodged when he was a fraction more than two months old, on March 14, 1956. The annotation down below “Hamish David Campbell Trumble / plse Edgar” is a courteous instruction to Edgar Parker, who for years served as a law clerk (I think, I hope I am right about that) at Mallesons, and as the designated custodian of valuable and/or important documents that Dad preferred to keep under lock and key in the office: documents such as deeds, titles, share certificates, passports, and the completed nomination forms for his four sons’ junior membership of the Melbourne Cricket Club. As I recall, Mr. Parker began his lifelong career of devoted service to the partners of Mallesons as a junior deputy to the ancient Mr. Ted Russell, ultimately rising in the mid-1970s to be in charge of the files, which in those days were still folded in half down the middle and tied with red tape. Files pertaining to dormant matters were customarily retained for a period of about fifteen years, after which time they were put in large canvas bags and consigned to an industrial incinerator, to make way for the next year’s accumulation of files. The task of doing this was allotted to the teenaged sons of partners during the first few weeks of the Christmas holidays, and so it was that in the summer of 1979 Mr. Parker became my very first boss, and an exceedingly kind and benevolent one he was too. I was fifteen, but looked closer to nine.

GAY 900

In the 1950s and 1960s, indeed throughout the rest of his life, our father indulged an immoderate enthusiasm for French automobiles, many of them unreliable. At the funeral Hamish summoned an especially charming image of Dad’s Walter Mitty-like reverie behind the wheel of whichever Citroën was for the time being the object of his affection—“I hear the thrum of accordions, I savour the fragrance of Gauloises mingled with that of blanquette de veau or the bouquet of a good Côtes de Rhône, and, with my beret worn just comme ça, I coast along the grand corniche…” or something similar. In fact for many years, but long before I came along, the family vehicle was a model very similar if not identical to this one, and it provided excellent service on many long-haul family holidays, country picnics, skiing trips to the old Belmore Ski Club at Mount Buller, which Dad helped build with his own bare hands, etc. Its Victorian registration plate was the altogether delightful “GAY 900.” Indeed the vehicle continues to be fondly remembered by my brothers as “the GAY 900.” So imagine his surprise when last week in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, where he is currently on vacation with Lesley, Nicko was astounded to come face to face with this relic of the French colonial period—think of what it must have survived: blanket bombing, napalm, the chaos of insurgencies, the American evacuation, the arrival of the Viet Cong, and the rest. In other words, without actually saying so, I suspect this chance encounter, of which he immediately notified us by email, powerfully removed Nick to Australian places of childhood and adolescence that must be about as different as it is possible to be from any aspect of life in Vietnam, then or since. I have an idea that through the immense number of automobiles Nick owned as a young man he may well have bought himself one of these jaunty black traction avant Citroëns 11CV (1934–1957), though alas it did not last.

The Beret

Last winter I lost my beret. I have no idea where I left it, or what has happened to it, but it is gone. This was no ordinary beret. Hamish gave it to me for Christmas in 1975, while we were staying with the Francis Tuftons, and he was an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge. It was a black woolen second- or even third-hand St. John’s Ambulance Brigade beret with slender leather trim, emblazoned inside the crown with the Maltese cross and certain other armorial bearings of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Over the years these gradually began to wear away, but this splendid article of apparel nevertheless performed its simple function with 100% effectiveness and utter reliability for no fewer than thirty-three years, gradually adapting itself also to the size of my aging head, and varying amounts of hair. Apart from the beautiful Tissot wristwatch Mum and Dad purchased for me in Basel on the same holiday—that went in 1999 when I was cleaned out by burglers in Adelaide—I cannot recall losing anything else of greater sentimental value. It brings to mind a remark Dennis Potter once made to Melvyn Bragg, which, paraphrased, adapts itself perfectly to the situation: “I’ve lost my beret, oh my god, I’ve lost my beret…oh, the beret-ness of that beret, and the lostness of that loss.” Dennis Potter was talking about the experience of losing something when you are a child, but I reckon there are times when it applies to adults with equal if not greater force—much as we like to pretend that certain material or worldly possessions do not matter to us quite so much as they actually do. For several months I couldn’t bear even to think about trying to replace my beret. However, at this time of year, when with stony dread we await the gruesome onset of fall, then the outrageous atrocities of the next winter, you have no choice but to reach for headgear. So lately I have been trawling on-line. I have with increasing frustration visited countless virtual purveyors of hats, but although the world is awash with berets, I cannot find just the right one. They are either too broad, too snug, too foppish, too furry, the wrong color, or else hitched to some irritating selling point such as “genuine Basque,” or else ridiculously expensive. However, I have not yet given up.

An Evening at Maxine's

Among my most treasured possessions is a set of classic recordings, each and every one of which was lovingly compiled for me years ago on cassettes from the original gramophone records in the collection of my elder brother Hamish. Lately I had them transferred to CD, so now I can savor them afresh. There is a hint of the remedial instinct at work here, and a gentle nudge from Big Brother towards the specialist taste of the café concert transplanted to Nashville, Tenn., South Gippsland, and Brunswick Street, Fitzroy—also, come to think of it, New Orleans, La., Broadway, Hollywood and San Francisco, Calif., Pinewood Studios and Broadcasting House in London, and Paris, France.

Here, for example, is the playlist for An Evening at Maxine’s, Vol. 1: (1) Charles Aznavour, “The Old-Fashioned Way” (Aznavour/ Garvarentz/ Hirschhorn/ Kasha); (2) Telly Savalas, “Who Loves Ya, Baby?” (Cacavas); (3) Sophie Tucker, “Stay At Home, Papa” (Tucker); (4) Chad Morgan, “The Fatal Wedding” (Morgan); (5) Delia Derbyshire, Dick Mills, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Theme music for Doctor Who (fragment) (Grainer); (6) Julio Iglesias, “Pensami” (Grever/ Belfiore); (7) Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner, “Jeannie’s Afraid of the Dark” (Parton); (8) Percy Faith (above) and his orchestra, Theme music for A Summer Place (Steiner); (9) Hank Williams, Jr., “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” (Williams); (10) Sons of the Pioneers, “Chant of the Wanderer” (1941); (11) The Swingle Singers, Jazz Voice Transcription of the Fugue in D Minor (Bach, from The Well-Tempered Clavier); (12) Lyle Lovett “She’s Leaving Me Because She Really Wants To” (Lovett); (13) Jerry Lee Lewis, “Cold, Cold Heart” (Williams); (14) Unattributed arrangement of the theme music for The Third Man (Karas); Unidentifiable cover of “(There’ll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)” (Dorsey); (15) Dolly Parton, “Wings of a Dove” (Parton); (16) Henry Mancini and his orchestra, “The Pink Panther Theme” (Mancini); (17) Mitzi Gaynor, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” (original cast recording) (Rodgers and Hammerstein); (18) Glen Campbell, “Honey Come Back To Me” (Webb); (19) Kingston Trio, “Them Sand Pickers” (Mason Williams); (20) Cab Calloway and his orchestra, “Minnie the Moocher” (Calloway/ Mills); (21) Petula Clark, “Il faut revenir” (1966); (22) Unattributed poolside music (“I love the sweet Maori girl”); (23) Commander Cody, “Truck Drivin’ Man” (Fell); (24) Freddie Fender, “The Wild Side of Life” (Carter/ Warren); (25) Tanya Tucker, “Pride of Franklin County” (Tibbles/ Keith); (26) Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, “The Lonely Bull (El solo toro)” (Lake); (27) Linda Ronstadt, “The Tattler” (Cooder/ Titelman); (28) Status Quo, “Wild Side of Life” (Warren/ Carter); (29) Dwight Yoakam, “Smoke Along the Track” (Rose/ Helms); (30) Patsy Cline, “Crazy” (Cline/ Nelson), and (31) Fragment of an unattributed cover of “Aloha ’Oe” by Lydia Lili‘u Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamaka‘eha, better known as Queen Lili‘uokalani of the Hawaiian Islands.

Is there, I wonder, a common thread that wends its way through this programme of hits? What lessons has my brother set before me with such thoughtfulness and unabashed eclecticism? The country and western and occasional gospel elements are unavoidable, as is the recurring focus on the clash between, on the one hand, machismo and, on the other, redoubtably independent-minded women, above all the astonishing Sophie Tucker. This makes for considerable Sturm und Drang. Yet consider also the tenderness, the subtlety, the lightness of touch exhibited by Charles, Julio, Glen, Telly Savalas (especially), not to mention The Sons of the Pioneers, and Her late Majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani. An unusual combination, perhaps, but one would expect nothing less from Hamish the Magnificent.

MALO MALO MALO MALO

This morning I received a card from Hamish in which he reminisces about Sponge Austin’s Latin classes at school, in particular the memorable proverb “Malo malo malo malo” which translates rather neatly into English as “I would rather be / In an apple tree (locative) / Than a naughty boy / In adversity,” further evidence (if it were needed) of the sparkling brilliance, economy, and homonymic brinkmanship of Classical Latin, and, incidentally, the resourcefulness of Myfanwy Piper in raiding a Latin grammar that apparently once belonged to her spinster aunt, and then splicing the text into Miles’s song for Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw (1954). The original designs for that year’s premiere at La Fenice were created by her husband the artist John Piper.

A flashy development of the original is “Malo malo malo malo malo malo malo, quam dente vento occurrere,” which means approximately “I would rather meet with a bad apple, with a bad tooth, than a bad mast with [i.e. in] a bad wind.”

I haven’t located Miss Playll’s Latin grammar, nor any evidence of ancient provenance—nice try, Wikipedia, but it is certainly not from Cicero—so “Malo malo malo malo” and “Malo malo malo malo malo malo malo, etc.” may well have been the inventions of some schoolroom wag, or an undergraduate with time on his hands.

Robert Reid remembered “Malo malo malo malo” having being used as an exercise at Glasgow Grammar School (Old Glasgow and Its Environs: Historical and Topographical, Glasgow: D. Robertson, 1864, p. 284, actually an addendum reprinted from one of his articles in the Glasgow Herald), and it was certainly also known to Alfred Henderson (Latin Proverbs and Quotations, London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1869) as well as to the Hon. Hugh Rowley (Gamosagammon; or, Hints on Hymen, for the Use of Parties About to Connubialize, London: John Camden Hotten, 1870).

Incidentally, I am rather tickled by the especially turgid German rendering of “Malo malo malo malo,” namely “Ich möchte lieber in einem Apfelbaum sein als ein schlechter Mann im Unglück,” which proves that strict case structure of a language does not necessarily guarantee anything remotely like concision.

Anyhow, the news from South Gippsland is encouraging: Mungo’s broken arm is mending well and apparently does not interfere with “his saxomaphone practice.” Roy played in the Inverloch/Kongwak school soccer side last Friday week in the lightning premierships (“against glamour teams from Foster, Kurrumburra, Leongatha, and Mirboo North,” but evidently not from Poowong East or Fish Creek). He even won a thrilling penalty shootout “Grand Final.”

I already knew about Mungo’s arm. He informed me about his excellent progress in a meticulously ciphered message that came by email last week. Poozles, meanwhile, seems destined to emulate his father’s fine record of sustained accomplishment on the school playing fields of Victoria.

Nicko

The week before last my eldest brother Nick had a temporarily incapacitating stroke whilst hiking with his wife Lesley and a group of fellow travelers in the MacDonnell Ranges not too far distant from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

It came on quite suddenly, and within an hour or two Nick was completely paralyzed down the left side, and stranded near the summit of a high bluff. He had to be rescued by helicopter, and because there was only room for Nick’s stretcher on board, the pilot, and a nurse, poor Lesley had no option but to continue hiking with the rest of the group until she could be driven into Alice Springs from the camp site later that night. She must have been frantic with worry.

Nick himself was pretty alarmed, too, because I gather the emergency room at Alice Springs Regional Base Hospital is quite bracing, even at the best of times. He recalls seeing beyond the hem of the green curtain next to him a pair of feet dangling over the edge of a neighboring bed—wearing ankle chains. On the other side, a Territorian policeman was piecing together a statement from an Aboriginal woman with two broken arms.

It is a measure of how much, or how little, actually happens in Alice that this shot of Nick appeared a few days later on the front page of the local newspaper, the Centralian Advocate. Mum was not at all pleased: “Couldn’t they have found a better photograph?”

Simon rang me with the news. By a strange coincidence he and his wife Mary Ann had been on a separate but rather less strenuous hiking holiday in the vicinity, and were able to see Nick in hospital upon their return to Alice. Fortunately, we have learned to preface any and all such disclosures on the telephone with the umbrella statement, “Everything is going to be all right,” but even so it was a shock.

Nick is fourteen and a half years older than me; Simon twelve and a half, and Hamish nearly nine. Actually there has never been a time when all three of my brothers have not loomed overhead, either physically (at first) but, in a larger sense, psychically also, as fully-fledged, remarkably talented adults, as different from each other as, indeed, I am from all three—although these days I think we are gradually beginning to notice the slightly unexpected similarities: more than a few vestigial remnants of Peter.

Simon was married well before I left prep school; Nick before I left high school, and Hamish soon afterwards. My eldest niece, Lucy, was born shortly before my tenth birthday. So I had the benefit both of growing up as a kind of only child, my long-suffering parents’ one-boy second family, if you like, and also the excitement and stimulus of belonging to a big family of much older siblings and their indulgent girlfriends, not to mention exotic uncles and thrilling aunts, all of whose whose dinner-time and summer holiday conversations, to which I listened intently and with pride, provided fascination—and also much to emulate.

It cannot have been easy having a precocious baby brother under their adolescent feet, but when, aged 11, I came under the spell of Abba—or, as Mum referred to them, maddeningly, “the Abbas”—there was a moment of crisis. Nick’s dismay at this unwelcome development prompted him to give me an AC/DC album, a plucky but forlorn attempt to rescue me from what he regarded as an awful vacuum of taste. However, my loyalty to Frida, Benny, Björn, and Agnetha being by then total, I responded defiantly by pretending not to know who AC/DC were, not perhaps the first moment of difficulty in our fraternal relations, but thankfully a low point from which we have since recovered.

I suspect Dad was wholly oblivious to Abba, and on the same subject Simon has always remained silent, but writing from La Rochelle, where he was spending the European summer with a pneumatic Swedish girlfriend called Pia, Hamish provided page after page of positive, elegantly handwritten reinforcement. I still have the letter. This was, I suspect, a creative experiment in reverse psychology, but it failed dismally: By then I actually wanted to be Frida. (Straight into the bathroom mirror: “No more... carefree... laugh-ter / Silence... ever... af-ter / Walking through an empty hou-ouse, bum-bum, tears in my ey-es [bum, bum-bu-bum, bum-bum] / Here is where the story e-ends, bum-bum, this is goodby-ay-ay-aye...” with imaginary microphone, exquisitely crafted Swedish accent, and much sleepy-eye and pout-work. I was bloody good.)

For some years until recently Nick played the sexy bass in a daringly nihilistic ad hoc post-punk band called Compost (“We Stink”). They did numerous gigs at the St. Kilda Bowling Club, and the Esplanade Hotel in St. Kilda to general acclaim. The Espy loved them because they sold an awful lot of beer. I treasure their CD, but I confess I do not often play it.

Fortunately it has taken only a few days for Nicko to recover most of the functions of the left side of his body, but when I eventually spoke to him he sounded pretty shaken. I suspect their four children are still rather shocked also. I’m told that strokes of this kind can occur among people even fitter and healthier than Nick, and occasionally much younger also. As strokes go, his was the sort you would wish to have, in other words not involving any kind of cerebral haemorrhage.

He’s back in Melbourne now, and tells me he rather misses the Alice Springs Hospital—but not all that much. I had wondered about the wisdom of flying back to Melbourne, but he says nothing would have induced him to repeat the experience of traveling by train from Alice to Adelaide aboard the famous Ghan, and thence to Melbourne on the Overland. As he remarked with feeling overnight, when you need to fly, you fly. Thank goodness he is going to be all right.

Letter from Hamish

10/6/09

Metung

Dear Angus,

How are you? I am well. I have been doing some Research. I have been on the trail of Trumbles in literature, inspired by your blog. You know, Angus, I only recently discovered how immense your blog is. I was aware, of course, of the blog entries which you sent me links unto, but it was only a week or two ago that I realized there was more material there that I could access. Wow! I don’t know how you do it, and hold down a job, and write a book! Your blog, Angus, puts me in mind of Thomas de Quincey, who saw the totality of his work in the nature of a Gothic Cathedral, each tiny part a piece of an enormous, colossal, evolving whole, The English Mail Coach—the Nave, etc., anyway, I only saw your Virginia Woolf piece a few days ago, after quite a lot of reading. I had set myself the task of finding the Trumble reference I remembered, indistinctly, from my studies at Cambridge with my modernism tutor. I failed to impress him from an early date with my researches on T. S. Eliot, who, I discovered had exchanged several amiable and charming letters with Groucho Marx, which I drew his reluctant attention to, and later in an informal “symposium”-style tutorial at the pub, I had interjected a remark about April being truly-ruly the cruelest month where I come from (it was because I was fed up with seasonal references being northern-hemispheric-o-centric). Anyway, I decided to re-read V. Woolf. I had a stroke of luck—I quickly found a copy of To The Lighthouse in the op shop. I was sure this was the book—so sure that after I scanned it for Mr. Trumble in vain, I read it properly, to be sure, to no avail. My local library coughed up Mrs. Dalloway which was my next guess, but again, no dice. I had, however, read another of this lesbotic genius’ mistresspieces, and while I agree with your assessment of her Bloomsbury snobbisme, I was getting “into” them, as they say in the classics. But still Mr. Trumble eluded me—no matter, I was sure that The Waves would be the one. My local library network had exhausted itself giving up Mrs. Dalloway, but nowadays we library patrons can borrow from any library across Victoria, and Swan Hill had a copy of The Waves. However, after 2 weeks my library told me that the Swan Hill Waves was “missing”—imagine that, Angus!—but the kind and helpful librarian at Wonthaggi told me—not to worry—he would organise another copy—leave it to him. 2 weeks later I got an email that my “Waves” was ready to collect. Well, I was excited, then deflated because I realized you had found the reference by yourself, but when I collected the book, I got the scent of the chase again, because what I had got was the 1976 Hogarth Press edition of V. W.’s The Waves—the two holograph drafts transcribed and edited by J. W. Graham, who must have been ever so keen on V. W., because he has copied out her notebooks and added all her crossings out, etc. (as you can see). I realized that here was an opportunity for original Trumble research, so I commenced reading. Let me say that, while I cannot identify the Trumble episode in any form in the first draft, and there is a Turnbull/Trumble passage in the second draft (see over), the reading was not unprofitable. Oh no. The first draft contains dozens and dozens of references to Louis, the Australian, son of a banker and his Australian accent, boomerangs, colonial inferiority—that Virginia had a definite idea about Louis and his Australian origin and she made sure she didn’t forget it for subsequent drafts. I thought about that a lot, and it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know many Australians, but as she cast her mind back to the twilight years of Victoria, and the Golden Age of Cricket, in the nostalgic glow of her method, one name might have popped up in the stream of her consciousness—Hugh Trumble, Australian test cricket champion, and, let’s not forget, bank manager. Is it not possible, no no, almost certain, that when casting about for a name for her gentleman on a train, her mind free-associating behind the twin filters of her arch-lesbotic superciliousness, and her disappointing anti-Australian prejudices, her final choice is actually an unintended tribute to a great and noble Trumble,

A mighty tall trundler named Hugh,

Who oft saved the skin of the ’Roo,

The foe thought him dead,

But he popped up his head,

“If you want me, I’ll soon pull you through!”?

Keep up the good work Angus.

Lots of love from Hamish.

P.S. What about Trumbles in art? I think we can by now consider Trumble and Trumbull to be interchangeable, especially in the distant past. Have you considered the case of John Trumbull (1756-1843), the American artist who fought in the War of Independence, after which he traveled to London and paris (as many Trumbles before and since) and worked with West the Quaker neoclassicist; apparently Trumbull is well represented in your American museums and he wrote his “Autobiography” (1841, repr. 1953). I got this out of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists—is there no field in which Penguins do not cover all aspects of life and learning? Must go now and scour the op shops of South Gippsland for hidden treasure.

x x x Hamish

Fiji

In 1972, Dad and Mum traveled for an extended period in Europe, only I think for the second time. With supreme generosity, because international travel in those days was still far more expensive than it is now, they arranged for Hamish and me to meet them in Fiji, for the May school holidays. I was eight.

The preparations were formidably exciting, because this was to be Hamish’s and my first trip abroad.

It emerged that passports would need to be obtained.

I suppose it is a mark of just how far we have come that I distinctly recall a serious discussion about the absurdity of the need for an Australian passport, when, after all, Fiji was until recently British, and, besides, had a governor-general, and all mod-cons.

It would be like needing a passport to go to somewhere like New Zealand!

Anyhow, at length we did indeed have to get passports.

Mum made an appointment with the nice studio photographer around the corner in Glenferrie Road, where a not merely serviceable, but rather fine black-and-white passport photograph was duly taken.

In the comfort of his old surgery across High Street, further down Glenferrie Road, Dr. Richard Ham painfully administered the necessary inoculations for Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Cholera, Berri-Berri, Plague, Krohn’s, Warts, and God knows what else, and equipped each of us with the old, bright yellow passport-like documents attesting to the international quarantine authorities the fact that these prudent steps had been taken by a fully-qualified medical practitioner.

Meanwhile, our bookings were made by Juanita Scott, the family’s hard-working, jovial travel agent in an upstairs room in Chapel Street, Prahran, who in due course presented us with our hugely complex tickets, and the complimentary bottle-green British Overseas Airways Corporation hand luggage, emblazoned B.O.A.C., which was of such modest physical dimensions that one now wonders what it is that current air travelers stuff into those bloated caravanserai-sized panniers on wheels.

On the appointed day, Granny and Aunt Anne drove us out to Tullamarine, and bade us farewell.

I have the most vivid recollection of the flight, which was aboard an exciting brand new Boeing 747 Jumbo jet aircraft, and gazing out the window across an endless blanket of fluffy cotton wool sitting over the Pacific Ocean.

Poor Hamish relinquished the window seat. He must have just turned sixteen, so the journey cannot have been a tremendously exciting prospect for him, nevertheless he was a model brother throughout.

Mum and Dad were waiting to greet us at Nadi, and I still remember the moist hot smell of the tropical air as we scampered down the steps onto the wet tarmac, and trotted over to the insubstantial thatched outbuilding that doubled as Nadi International Airport. A kindly Fijian presented each and every passenger with a fresh lae, of Japonica, I think, and a dazzling smile, our passports were stamped, and I rushed into the open arms of Mum.

We spent our holiday on one of the islands in the Yasawa Group, across Bligh Water. Hamish spent most of his days obsessively beach-combing, and in due course created several enormous necklaces out of the carefully matched little flat, round shells with a hole in the middle that seem to make up almost the entirety of the reef. He made big ones at first, but graduated to increasingly fiddly, smaller sizes.

Meanwhile I hunted for less time-consuming cowries, and raced around literally breathless with excitement for the entire time.

Every evening, at dusk, a statuesque semi-naked Fijian played on a huge drum, hewn from the trunk of an enormous coconut palm, which was the announcement that dinner was served.

One night we made friends with a couple from Ann Arbor, Mich., Ivan and Betty-Anne Duff, who, it turned out, knew one of Mum’s Davidson cousins, Cherry Zlatnik, who had been one of the bridesmaids at Dad and Mum’s wedding. She ended up marrying an American college professor, and lived in Ann Arbor for a while. It seems an astonishing coincidence, but, I suppose, such collisions are a natural consequence of modern tourism.

I remember being transfixed by the blueness of the Melanesian reef water, which, until you see it for yourself, is impossible fully to appreciate: a blue of such crystalline clarity, luminosity, and depth, that it seems to be something more akin to liquid glass than ordinary salt water. Last year I went back, and it is still the same.

Here we are, en famille, tucked up in bed: beautiful Hamish, Mum, Dad, and me between them, sunburned, and giggling immoderately. Hamish is reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the classic by Dee Brown.

I’m not sure what Mum is reading, but someone like Chaucer is on the cover, and it therefore looks suspiciously like a prescribed English literature text for the University of Melbourne, where she was enrolled as a part-time mature-age undergraduate (B.A., 1982).

Dad is almost certainly reading a thriller, or perhaps a racy spy novel, something diverting.

Later, we drove from Nadi to Suva, around the southern side of the main island, Viti Levu, and although the car was brimming with luggage and four passengers and there was not an inch of spare space, I remember Dad stopping the car to explain to an old Fijian gentleman, whom he spotted trudging wearily along by the side of the road—wearing the standard shirt and tie, zig-zag skirt, robust sandals, and carrying a small suitcase—that, much as Dad would love to be able to give the old boy a ride to town, unfortunately it would not be possible, so please would he accept our apologies?

It was a typically thoughtful, if somewhat redundant, and slightly awkward gesture, proffered by the kindest and gentlest of men. The old Fijian gentleman must have thought we were insane, and, if so, I think he probably had a point.

Southern Light, Leaping Horses, and Cream

My only regret about living abroad is that I do not see nearly enough of my family. Here we are in 1965, surrounded by daisies near the dining room window at number 18 Denham Place. Nick is holding me, Simon is on the right, and Hamish is sitting on the top step.

The old house was demolished, and the pretty garden obliterated, in 1979, after their old friend Joe Palliser designed and built a new house for Mum and Dad on the site next door. In a way, that move was a tangible expression of changing circumstances, because by then all three of my brothers had left home, and I was still at school. 

I have many happy memories of the old house, including what must be my earliest: the sight through the wooden rails surrounding my cot of afternoon sunlight falling against the back of a pair of closed curtains in the front room. That room was for the time being, I think, an ad hoc nursery, and not Dad’s study where he liked to play old records, and potter around long after everyone else was asleep, which is how I remember it much later.

Those curtains were decorated with leaping black horses, and maybe a few small Chinese characters also, widely spaced against a buff-colored background, and I once had the startling experience of seeing an eerily similar design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to which clearly most if not all aesthetic roads eventually lead.

Mum is there, too. I think she must have come in to open the curtains, and get me up from my nap, but what stands out is that bright shaft of southern light slanting over the back of the curtains, and the leaping horses.

There was a curvacious verandah at the front of the house, with a glorious wisteria trained along it, and a creamy pink cammellia adjacent. I also remember hearing the clip-clop of real horses, the draught horses from Woodmason’s Dairy.

It seems somehow incredible that, in the late 1960s, the milk bottles were still delivered to us each morning by horse and cart, even though the cart was equipped with sensible rubber tyres, ingeniously cannibalized from some old motor vehicle.

They came up Denham Place from the direction of Russell Street, and whether or not the gentle incline provided some gastro-intestinal stimulus, almost always the pair of horses left behind plenteous lumps of sweet-smelling fibrous manure right opposite the front gate, which Mum collected with a spade and put on the garden.

Sometimes Mum used to take me for a walk down to Woodmason’s Dairy near the corner of Glenferrie and Malvern Roads, to pay a visit to the horses in their stalls.

Mum has never permitted herself many luxuries, but one thing she loves perhaps above all else, and has done since she was a little girl living at Raeshaw, the family property near Sale in East Gippsland, is pure cream.

More often than not there was still a suggestion of real cream that formed at the top of Woodmason’s bottles of milk, and on the cap, which was made from aluminium foil. To open the bottle, carefully you depressed the cap with your thumb, and peeled it back.

As a little boy I adored watching Mum sometimes lick the little dollop of cream off the inside of the cap of a milk bottle, wearing an expression of unalloyed pleasure, to which she added a little staccato shrug—as if to acknowledge some vague sense of self-indulgence, even naughtiness.

The rightness and simplicity of our upbringing makes me now want to shower Mum with lavish gifts of cream, but her wholly uncomplicated enjoyment of what is now often cast as a substance almost as unwholesome as tobacco is dangerous—even while, as Nick rightly points out, coffee now comes in “tall,” “grande,” “venti,” etc., where once it came in a “cup”—is, I think, firmly grounded in sparing consumption.